thread: 2006-07-03 : Mechaton rules
On 2006-07-05, Uriel wrote:
I got a game and a half yesterday. Me and two other guys, Kim and Anton, played a quick game which lasted little over an hour and was a blast. Then me, Anton and another guy began setup for a regular long game but we only got as far as setting it up because our discussion of the rules took too long and it was difficult to think too hard because of the damn heat.
The quick game we played went very smoothly. I had some sheets done for their mechs so it was easy for them to decide what to erase when taking damage. During play we placed the shield dice right behind the mechs so that everyone could see it clearly. The new shielding rule worked really fine, very easy to understand. People tended to assign their best white to it often so shield was often very high which meant that very few hits were scored. After 4 rounds no mech was killed, I had one mech who took 1 hit and one left with only 1 white, Kim got 3 hits on his huge red fourlegger and had 1 white left on his small red fuchikoma. Anton was completly unscratched (bastard).
The sensor took a little more explaining and I don't think anyone ever used any spot dice since we rolled a little too low on those. I had sensors on both of mine, but I got beat up a lot and had to sacrifice them early.
The rule that made the most impact though was that the mecha you shot at got to act next, which several times led to a chain of shooting that superseded initiative. I think it worked fine, it added another tactical layer: "Lets see, if I shoot him he gets to act next and he'll rush over there before my next guy, so I think I'll you instead."
Whoever tagged the rocket last won so it soon became a clusterfuck in the middle where each of us had a mech touching it. I thought I had the advantage here since I had most HtH weapons, but I rolled crappy. We started the clock at 8 and it didn't take long until we started thinking out loud about how many round we had left and who would touch it last. It ended up with the three mechs in middle acting last. I would act on 7, Anton on 10, so he would tag it last. So it was really up to who Kim shoot last. If he shoot Anton he would act next and it would take him a miracle to kill my mech in the same round so then I would act last and win. If he shoot me Anton would still act last and win. In the end Kim, despite of my argument that Anton deserved to lose since he had escaped unscratched I got shoot. No hits, so I shoot Anton. 1 hit, but not enough.
Afterwards we talked a little about vpp's and wondered if it would've been better if we'd scored points for each round you had the rocket tagged.
It was damn fun anyway! They really liked it and wanted the adress to this site.
I went out for some sushi and when I came back I talked some of the warhammer guys into playing. We started setting up for a three ways big battle, assigning mechs and vpp's. Then it came to a halt during setup. Two of us had armies with exactly the same value and starting score and were tied for the defender position. The rules does not say what to do if you tied (step 4 in the setup). So it took some bickering to sort that out but we solved that with a dice roll.
Then the defender, forgot his name, asked what prevented him from placing his perimeter so far to the short side that we would only have a small strip to place our mechs and his station would be way over on the other side of the map. I suggested honor, but clearly he had none and did so anyway. So me and the Primary attacker ended up almost on top of each other and it was pretty clear from the start that if the defender just ran for it back to his base we would never intercept him in time and unless one of us attackers totally crushed the other we couldn't gather enough victory points to come close to the defender. So we didn't play on the excuse that it was too late, but frankly those guys would've been no fun to play with anyway.
Later I went through it again and found out that if we both hadn't been so lacking in the artillery section we would have been able to shoot him from afar and not have to run after to get a clear line of direct fire. Oh well.
Another question that came up was if you can use artillery cannons to fire indirect fire in an arc over obstacles? As a former artillery enlisted I had to yes you could, but if the imagined arc was very steep because the target was near a high obstacle that would count as at least partial cover.
oh about the pictures; the guy with the jumpjets standing on the rock isn't involved in the fray, he's just standing there being cool and taunting the othera because they can't fly that high.
Are there any rules about what obstacles you can scale with green dice?
This makes Uriel go "mixup"
Anton wasn??t invloved in the second game, don't know why I wrote that
This makes VB go "I can't see the wide shot!"
Just the close up.
